#PNWPokerCal Planner for 31 January 2018

Stephen Bokor wins the 2013 Battle at the Beach, via PokerNews

Stephen Bokor 1988—2018

Max Young posted a notice on NW Poker Friday afternoon that Stephen Bokor had passed away. Bokor was an accomplished poker player who grew up in Knappa, Oregon, outside of Astoria, playing online before heading out on the live poker circuit for several years following Black Friday.

Bokor ran up a string of cashes before his big win at Pompano Beach in 2013. Even before then, he’d caught the eye of poker journalists, and he was profiled in the Global Poker Index’s The Chase shortly after his win. His short career as a live tournament player (his last recorded cash was winning the Fall 2016 Turbo at Wildhorse) currently has him in 18th place on the Oregon All-Time Money List, with more than $400,000 in recorded live tournament winnings.

Portland Meadows Goes Crypto

The first Friday in March, Portland Meadows Poker Room will host what owner Brian Sarchi says is the first live tournament poker event with buyins and payouts made in cryptocurrency.

Sponsored by Dash (Digital cASH), the promotional tournament is guaranteed to have a 20% overlay; Dash is contributing an extra Dash coin for every Dash coins contributed by players to the prize pool. Dash is providing an on-site cryptoATM for trading in Dash coins.

The tournament starts at 7pm on 2 March with 20-minute levels. Buyins are 0.1 Dash coin and payouts will be made in Dash coins. Dash was trading at $672 at 10pm Tuesday, but like a lot of crypto currencies, the price is volatile, and it was over $1,000 as recently as two weeks ago, so another month and who knows?

Details on how to get yourself set up with Dash—and how the buyin and payout process will work—should be forthcoming soon.

Dash

Meanwhile, congrats to Robert Brewer, who won Saturday’s Wild West Poker Series High Roller at Meadows. More on that in a bit.

Spring Poker Round Up Schedule Released

The next Wildhorse Spring Poker Round Up is just a couple months off, the new schedule is out, and there have been some big changes in the routine.

The High Roller tournament has been moved to the first weekend of the series, out of the mid-week doldrums.

HORSE  is back! It has a smaller buyin and it’s running on the first Sunday—at 7pm—which doesn’t seem to be very high expectations, but it is on the schedule, and it leads directly into Omaha Hi-Low on Monday and Big O on Tuesday, so mixed-game players can make the most of their time out east. That also means the end of the week after Wednesday’s Seniors tournament is straight Hold’em leading into the Main Event on Saturday. I can get behind that.

wildhorse_spring_2018

Last Week’s Poker Time

The final table of the Wild West High Roller was played out on the RFID table used by The Poker Guys to shoot their Poker Time show, and they’re also running Sit & Gos this week that should all be showing up on YouTube soon.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

Idaho’s Dylan Linde played the Lucky Hearts Poker Open High Roller last week and took 5th place out of 75 players putting up $25.5K each.

This Week In Portland Poker

Friday is the First Friday of February (and Groundhog Day), so it’s time for a $20K at Final Table. This is also Super Bowl weekend, and Portland Meadows will be closed for the day (according to their web site). Final Table will be open, though you may want to check about guarantees on Sunday.

My Time Is Coming

I had a ticket to a Quarterfinal single-table-satellite to this weekend’s Ignition $250K GTD (the winner of the 6-Max table got a seat into the direct satellite). We started with 75bb, a player got knocked out on the first hand, I was cut down to 7bb on hand 6 when I ran into aces, I managed to battle back to 65bb and the chip lead with three players by hand 35, but I couldn’t close out the heads-up.

Wild West Poker Tour Event #3 $1,500 GTD NLHE Bounty

I played a bounty tournament and just got a couple of bounties, played my first live tournament in a couple of weeks at Portland Meadows on Friday night and just frittered my stack away. I didn’t see a pair over sizes in three hours—one of the guys at the other end of the table got aces on consecutive hands (see my PokerNews article “In and Out of the Luckbox”, or just play with the Starting Hand Distribution Simulator). Didn’t even make the break. I had to work and missed the 6-Max at noon, but it had just gotten into the money as the bounty tournament was starting up, with more than four times the guarantee in the prize pool.

I hadn’t though the Warp Speed to the Final Table tournament would have been very exciting, but the crew made a show of the all-in first hands on the RFID table, and people seemed to be having fun.

Wild West Poker Tour $50K GTD NLHE High Roller

Saturday, I lasted about five hours in the High Roller, doing what I thought was reasonably well until my table broke and I was moved to Table 1 which housed Brandon Cantu and the eventual champ (pictured above) Robert Brewer (btw, you can read my 2015 interview with Robert at PokerNews).

I missed the Survivor tournament on Sunday night because of a family thing, and that’s the  end of a very unproductive poker week.

Only a Day Away

  • Los Angeles Poker Classic 25  at Commerce Casino finishes out its first month of events with HORSE tomorrow, Triple Triple Draw on Friday, and NL HORSE on Saturday. Early next week is Stud Hi-Low, Omaha mix (Big O, PLO8, and O8), and NL O8 on Tuesday, then a $300K GTD multi-entry tournament at the end of next week.
  • At Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza  the Mid-States Poker Tour to present a $500K GTD tournament with $1,100 buyin Thursday and Friday. Saturday is a $100K GTD Bounty ($1,100 buyin). Next week is a $400 tournament with $100K GTD and on the weekend if a n 8-Max $800 tournament with $250K GTD.
  • The annual Winter Super Stack is at Calgary’s Deerfoot Inn today. Thursday is the first of three C$550 Mega Stack entry days, and there’s a C$330 PLO Bounty on Saturday. No guarantees, but the opening event last year (same buyin) had a prize pool of $128K in US dollars, with the $1,500 buyin Main Event (starting 9 February) reaching US$250K.
  • Alaska Airlines has seasonal direct flights from Portland to MIlwaukie, Wisconsin, but winter is apparently not the season. I’m going to throw WSOP Circuit Wisconsin into the mix anyway, since you can get there direct from Seattle and prices are reasonable (less than $500 RT). The Main Event for this stop has a $750K guarantee. Starts 1 February.
  • 1 February is also the start of the US Poker Open at Aria in Las Vegas. The events have buyins of $10K to $50K, but there are supposedly side events in the mere three figures, according to Poker Atlas.
  • Ontario Poker Room has a $115 buyin Deepstack on Saturday if you’re on the east side of Oregon.
  • Heartland Poker Tour hits Colorado at Golden Gates again a week from today,
  • 8 February is the first of three entry days (four flights) For the Love of Money in Minneapolis at Running Aces. $350 buyin.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#PNWPokerCal Planner for 24 January 2018

The Portland Poker Nexus

Portland poker writer Zach Elwood (Reading Poker Tells, Verbal Poker Tellsand Exploiting Poker Tells) was interviewed on the penultimate episode of Season 4 of The Chip Race podcast, by Irish pros David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney. Zach’s segment starts about 15 minutes in and lasts for 20 minutes, it’s worth checking it out.

The same episode features the second half of a Phil Hellmuth interview that has nothing to do with the Northwest but is a prime example of cluelessness, in which he expounds at length on how sad it is that the haters hate Chris Ferguson, all for no reason he can see.

Fortunately, poker nit personality Carlos Welch also makes an appearance ( as he has on a variety of other podcasts over the past few years. He was on the verge of moving to Portland a couple of years ago, and it appears he may still be on the verge. He got his teacher certification last summer. (I wrote about playing with Carlos in a Thousandaire Maker a couple months back).

Last but not least in the personality parade is one of the new faces on the latest session of Poker TimeJeremy “Worm” Harkin. I owe Jeremy a debt of gratitude for providing me a place to stay (for money, natch, but at a decent rate) when I was in Las Vegas for the 2016 WSOP. And I agree with him that they need to run some PLO on Poker Time.

 #PNWPokerLeaderboard

Chris Hinchcliffe‘s player profile for winning the opening $1M GTD opener at the Los Angeles Poker Classic says Northern California, but Hendon Mob says Olympia. There was a 3-way ICM chop; Hinchcliffe had nearly two-thirds of the chips in play. It was his fourth final table of 2018—so far he’s had three figure, four-figure, five-figure, and six-figure cashes (not in that order).

Ron Brown of Spirit Lake, Idaho bested a field of 160 at the WSOPC Event #4 at Thunder Valley before turning around and beating 128 in Event #8 then taking 12th in Event #10 The three cashes more than double his tracked lifetime tournament earnings.

 

This Week In Portland Poker

It’s time for the Wild West Poker Tour at Portland Meadows this weekend. Seven events including a 6-Max, Bounty, High Roller, and a Survivor. I’m looking forward to all of them, but the 6-Max is during a work day…might be a lot of sick poker players that day.

My Time Is Coming

A down week for me in more than one way since the last Planner. I sat out my usual Friday evening game at Final Table because of some other obligations, and had a mid-afternoon event on Saturday that prevented me from making it up with the weekly $10K at Portland Meadows or the Main Event at Tulalip. So it was a strictly online for me. Busted three Thousandaire Maker tournaments, dumped four buyins in PLO and PLO8, and played thirteen other NLHE, PLO, and PLO8 tournaments, with only one cash, and that wasn’t particularly big, even though it was 6th in a field of 177. I was double-tabling on Friday and Saturday nights, holding first and second place in two of the tournaments for a while. Then I wasn’t.

Hand of the week goes to the $10K Bounty tournament I played where I got [kh kd] in with 19K against two stacks of 14K and 7.5K. The small stack had [ac as], and the middle stack had [ks ah], So I’m losing more than a thirds of my stack to the aces, but I should still be gaining some chips…unless the case ace hits…

Only a Day Away

I missed a few tournaments this month when I was rounding up stuff for the calendar. Colorado, Alberta, Callifornia…I’ll try to get back on track.

  • Los Angeles Poker Classic 25  at Commerce Casino keeps plugging along.There’s a $350 buyin HORSE tournament tomorrow, with a 2-7 Triple Draw/Omaha Hi-Lo/Stud Hi-Lo mix game on Friday and NLHE/PLO mix on Saturday. Omaha Hi-Lo Monday, Stud and Big O (Pot Limit) Tuesday, NL 2-7 Single Draw Wednesday, a bigger HORSE ($570 buyin) next Thursday, and Triple Triple Draw (A-5, 2-7, and Badugi) on Friday. Truly a great week if you’re a fan of the mixed games. And that doesn’t even count Saturday’s Social Experiment II (no phones, hoodies, or sunglasses), the Action Clock this Friday,
  • The Wynn Signature Weekend starts today. The highlight is the $250K GTD $600 buyin tournament (3 entry days). There’s also a $300 buyin Survivor tournament on Sunday with a $2.5K payout.
  • Ocean’s Eleven San Diego Classic starts tomorrow with the first of three entry days for the $150K GTD ($250 buyin).
  • There may still be a seat into the Stones Gambling Hall $1,100 single-table Sit & Go; three players make the money.

  • The $300 Muckleshoot Deepstack is Sunday at noon in Auburn.
  • Monday is the beginning of the first Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza of 2018. Opening day has a $12K GTD PLO/PLO8 tournament. The Venetian teams up with the Mid-States Poker Tour to present a $500K GTD tournament with $1,100 buyin next Thursday and Friday.
  • The annual Winter Super Stack is at Calgary’s Deerfoot Inn next SWednesday. Thursday is the first of three C$550 Mega Stack entry days, and there’s a C$330 PLO Bounty on Saturday. No guarantees, but the opening event last year (same buyin) had a prize pool of $128K in US dollars, with the $1,500 buyin Main Event (starting 9 February) reaching US$250K.
  • Alaska Airlines has seasonal direct flights from Portland to MIlwaukie, Wisconsin, but winter is apparently not the season. I’m going to throw WSOP Circuit Wisconsin into the mix anyway, since you can get there direct from Seattle and prices are reasonable (less than $500 RT). The Main Event for this stop has a $750K guarantee. Starts 1 February.
  • 1 February is also the start of the US Poker Open at Aria in Las Vegas. The events have buyins of $10K to $50K, but there are supposedly side events in the mere three figures, according to Poker Atlas.
  • Heartland Poker Tour hits Colorado at Golden Gates again two weeks from today,
  • 8 February is the first of three entry days (four flights) For the Love of Money in Minneapolis at Running Aces. $350 buyin.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#PNWPokerCal Planner for 17 January 2018

Out From Under the Radar

photo: Sam Cosby

Ali Imsirovic has been mentioned here a couple of times in the past few months—the first was at the end of November when a 4th place finish in the WSOPC Planet Hollywood Main Event brought him to my attention—but as I’m an idiot, I had no idea of what he was doing, despite the fact that he’s based in Vancouver, Washington.

According to a comment on NW Poker by Preston Jarneski, Imsirovic has “been crushing ACR [America’s Card Room] for a few years now.” Imsirovic’s Hendon Mob profile shows a string of three- and four-figure cashes going back to the 2015 Punta Cana Poker Classic, cashes in the Czech Republic, Austria, with a couple of bigger numbers posted in Las Vegas and Florida last year. Then, in November, Imsirovic kicked into 4th gear in Vegas with the WSOPC main Event, a 4th place cash in a small $10K at Bellagio’s WPT Five Diamond, and 4th at the Venetian in the $3,500 December Extravaganza Main Event. Then he went  to the Bahamas for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

I got a message from the fantastic Mr. Sam Cosby on Sunday afternoon that “Portland resident Almedin Imsirovic just won 10k hyper turbo spade at PCA.”  Imsirovic inserted himself into another $10K buyin (just a couple of days after min-cashing in a $3.3K event) to best a field of 55 in a 15-minute blind structure, at a final table that included Sam Greenwood, Stephan SchillhabelMustapha Kanit, and Benjamin Pollak, beating out WSOP Main Event Champion Ryan Riess heads-up for the $160,050 prize. Not bad for seven hours work. In the past eight weeks he’s climbed from 202nd to 40th on the Washington all-time money list at Hendon Mob.

You can see a lot more of Imsirovic (or at least hear him) in strategy videos he’s done over the past couple of years for Gripsed Poker Training including analysis of a 2014 win in a $200K guarantee on Bovada.

Estacada Community Foundation Benefit

There’s a benefit poker tournament in Estacada on 27 January for the Estacada Community Foundation. Entry is a $40 donation and prizes include a 55″ flat screen TV, a live-feed video drone and a number of other fine items.

The tournament is limited to 100 players (entry includes appetizers, beer, and wine). The event will include blackjack tables, and registration starts at 5pm at the Estacada Community Center (200 SW Club House Road), with the game starting at 6pm.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

Ali Imsirovic pretty much walked away with the leaderboard this week, but Max Young was part of the Northwest gang down at WSOPC Choctaw, where he racked up another Ring (his third) for Event #8 NLHE 6-Max. That’s after winning a side event and making the final table of Event #7, but before he got into the top 5% of the Main Event.

Anyone else? David Mallet—who won the Seniors event at Wildhorse in November—came in 2nd/509 in Venetian New Year’s Extravaganza Event #18 in what looks like a three-way deal.

Kevin MacPhee and Darren Rabinowitz both min-cashed in the PCA Main Event. And Baptiste Chavaillaz made the final table of Event #9 at Choctaw.

This Week In Portland Poker

I spend a lot of time looking at poker room web sites and griping here or to myself about how they’re not updated or that info is hard to find. I’m not going to have that excuse any more with Final Table Poker Club, because I just did a web site re-design for them, so if I have or hear any complaints I only have myself to blame. The next few days’ tournaments are on the right, it’s designed to be easily updated by the staff, it’s readable on mobile devices, and there’s a two-month event calendar. Check it out and let the staff know what you think works (or doesn’t)

This week’s big events are the Friday night $10K at Final Table and the Saturday noon $10K at Portland Meadows. It’s your last chances to pick up some big money before next weekend’s Wild West Poker Tour at Meadows.

As mentioned above, The Game  is trying to get 2/5 PLO shootouts running Thursday nights. They also have After Hours Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from closing to 8am.

My Time Is Coming

Just a couple of hideous sessions of PLO on Ignition this past week (I’m looking forward to playing live PLO at The Game Thursday evening if Sajru manages to round everyone up). Played a couple of Thousandaire Makers, made zome money playing NLHE Zone, cashed a $30 Jackpot Sit & Go then watched a $75 5x slip away from my early lead. Got about halfway through the Final Table Friday night $10K GTD before I slammed top pair on the flop with [ax qx] into a set of sevens. And I took second place after a rebuy in the home game. A down week, but still positive for the year so far. I’d hoped to make it up to Tulalip for the $100K GTD this coming weekend, but I’m not sure yet…

 

Only a Day Away

  • The Tulalip Poker Pow Wow $100K GTD Main Event has its first flight tomorrow, with another on Friday and the last on Saturday, $520 gets you in and the dealer addon.
  • Los Angeles Poker Classic 25  at Commerce Casino has a $250K GTD tournament this weekend with just a $175 buyin. Flights through Saturday at 5pm.
  • Thunder Valley’s World Series of Poker Circuit, has a $500K GTD Main Event ($1,675 buyin) with entries on Friday and Saturday.
  • The Venetian January Weekend Extravaganza has flights for a $250 buyin $250K GTD tournament through Saturday.
  • The $250 Muckleshoot Big Bounty is Sunday at noon in Auburn. Next Sunday Sunday is a Deepstack with a $300 buyin.
  • Saturday is the Ontario Poker Room Team Tournament, with a $125K buyin and $100 rebuy.
  • The Wynn Signature Weekend is coming upa week from today. The highlight is the $250K GTD $600 buyin tournament (3 entry days). There’s also a $300 buyin Survivor tournament on 28 January, with a $2.5K payout.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#PNWPokerCal Planner for 10 January 2018

In the Money

It was four years ago this month that I wrote In the Money, a little screed on long-term profitability for poker tournament players, which led to me writing for PokerNews for a couple of years, as well as my one foray into live reporting at the WSOP. It sparked a small amount of controversy, its own thread in the Two Plus Two News, Views, & Gossip forum, and a couple of podcast interviews. There was a lot of pushback from poker pros, and a few high-fives from cash game specialists like Limon (who is once again been hounded off of Twitter, sadly).

But last week, Daniel Negreanu put up a year-end post with a collation of his results from the past five years, casually dropping that he had losing years for 2016 and 2017. In fact, it it hadn’t been for the enormous Big One for One Drop payout for 2nd place in 2014 ($8.3M), only two of the five years would have been profitable, making him an average of about $89K profit per year on more than $2M in annual buyins. And that’s Daniel Negreanu we’re talking about, not mildly-talented tournament grinder.

The Calendar

I’ve put a lot of work into the #PNWPokerCalendar over the past few years. Did you know that you can sort the events by region? There are buttons at the top of the calendar that will select just the series and events for a speciific area: Southern California, Nevada, Portland, etc. You can also view events for just a single week. And over the past few months, I’ve been adding in entry information for specific events in brackets, just in case you haven’t already figured that out: [125e100b] means entry is $125 and rebuy is $100. An a is addon, natch. Where possible, I include any fees or dealer addons in the entry value.

Oh, and there’s an Expedia flight search link (you can also find hotels and cars) at the bottom of the page if you see something you like.

WSOP Millionaire Maker Qualifiers at the Beach

If you’re in Eugene on Tuesday or Thursday nights, the Beach Poker Club is running qualifying tournaments to their 26 May Final Tournament, a 100-seat event where the winner gets a seat and travel money to the WSOP Millionaire Maker. Playing five of the semi-weekly tournaments gets you a seat, and the more tournaments you play, the more chips you get for the final tournament, plus there’s a Main Event Satellite entry up for raffle.

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

One big result out of the other end of the continental US: Beaverton’s Nathaniel Anderson cut a deal for second place in the 197-entry Seminole Hard Rock Fun In the Sun Main Event just before the New Year. He was out-chipped 2 to 1, and he didn’t get the nifty guitar trophy, but he did get nearly twice the 3rd-place money.

My Time Is Coming

I’ve been picking my poker action back up since the lull of the holidays. I played two Thousandaire Makers mid-week (busting within ten minutes of the second after entering more than an hour into the tournament), then logged into a $15 Jackpot Sit & Go, picked up another 5x ($75) payout but couldn’t close it out. Played a few sessions of PLO and PLO8 online, then it was the Final Table First Friday $20K Guarantee. I was out before the break and managed to make a faux-pas.

Saturday, though, was my first Thousandaire Maker cash of the year. Even losing a couple buyins in PLO the next day it was still a profitable week.

Wild West Poker Tour

The schedule for the Wild West Poker Tour showed up on NW Poker the afternoon I posted last week’s Planner, so I didn’t get a chance to say anything about it, but I guess I’m going to have to take a day off work if I want to play the 6-Max at noon on Friday, 26 january.

There are a few things that aren’t entirely clear about the Warp Speed to the Final Table: I get that everyone at the table is all in on the first hand and everyone who wins gets to go to the final table, but does that mean the number of first tables is limited to 9 or 10 or that there’s going to be a 15-seat final table if they get a lot of entries and re-entries. I’m guessing that the final table beginning two hours after the start means they’ll just be running a couple of first tables at a time in sequence. But I want to play that and the Bounty…

I am eager to be either on the YouTubed High Roller final table or commentating on it, but I’m pretty sure neither is happening.

And the Sunday night Survivor; it should say right up front for clarity that 10% of the field is going to get $650. But I’m liking it.

Only a Day Away

  • The Tulalip Poker Pow Wow is under way. There is a satellite tonight and next Wednesday, with the 4-Game Mix on Thursday (1pm) and two entry days to the $50K GTD weekend event on Friday (1pm) and Saturday (11am). Monday is the 2-Game Mix, Seniors on Tuesday, then the $100K Main Event has three starting days on 18 January.
  • Heartland Poker Tour is at Ameristar East Chicago with the Main Event ($1650 entry) starting Thursday.
  • Los Angeles Poker Classic 25  at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles has their $1M GTD Kickoff tournament this weekend, with a $350 buyin and entry flights through Sunday morning.
  • Friday is the beginning of Thunder Valley’s World Series of Poker Circuit, the closest approach the WSOPC makes to Portland.
  • The $250 Muckleshoot Monthly Special is Sunday at noon in Auburn. The next Sunday (21 January) is the Big Bounty, and the last Sunday is a Deepstack.
  • The Venetian January Weekend Extravaganza runs 16—21 January, with five flights for a $250 buyin $250K GTD tournament at its backbone.
  • 20 January is the Ontario Poker Room Team Tournament, with a $125K buyin and $100 rebuy.
  • The Wynn Signature Weekend is coming up 24 January. The highlight is the $250K GTD $600 buyin tournament (3 entry days). There’s also a $300 buyin Survivor tournament on 28 January, with a $2.5K payout.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!

#PNWPokerCal Planner for 3 January 2018

Bicycle Town

The World Series of Poker Circuit is back at Bicycle Casino in March, padded out by the Bike’s own Mega Millions series. There are a number of interesting items on the docket, apart from what is usually one of the largest WSOPC Main Events of the year (starting 8 March) and the Mega Millions itself, with 11 starting days and buyins ranging from $160 to $4,300.

First off is the $100K GTD HORSE tournament running from 10—16 March. There are five starting flights (two at $240 and three at $350), and you can also enter directly into Day 2 for $1,700. At the lower-level buyin, you get 10K chips and 10% of the field makes it to Day 2. Pick the higher number and you get 15K in chips and 15% of the field gets through. If you make it to Day 2, you get $450; make it more than once and stacks taken out of play get an extra $1,350. (Entering into Day 2 directly gets you 100K in chips).

Second is the plan for 8pm single table Mega Millions satellites with no rake. All of your $430 buyin goes to the prize pool, and if you win you have direct entry into Day 2 of Mega Millions. $3000 of the Day 2 buyin does go to rake, but you don’t pay double rake on both the tournament and satellite. Only one per night and they’re going to be first-come-first-served.

Third, there are four Survivor tournaments with payouts between $3K and $10K. These could have been run as satellites, but they’re just my favorite form of tournament with a minimum of 820% ROI. You’re not going to get that in most tournament.

$20K GTD to First

Lucky Chances Casino south of San Francisco has an ad in the 3 January edition of Card Player for a 28 January tournament with $20K GTD for first place but there’s no info on what the buyin is. A similar tournament that ran in November had a $350 buyin.

First PokerTime of the Year

#PNWPokerLeaderboard

Mostly quiet until the new year begins, but there were a couple players whi made some moves.

Marvin Smith from Nampa, Idaho had one Hendon Mob cash on his record at the start of December. By the end of the year he had five—all of them during the Venetian New Year’s Extravaganza. He placed 38th in Event #3 on the 22nd, then was runner-up in Event #7 on Christmas Eve. He made the final table of the 95-player Boxing Day Bounty, then grabbed first place in a field of 117 two days later in another bounty event.

Another Idahoan, Michael Stewart from Boise, won Event #1 at the Venetian, beating out 251 others.

It was four-and-a-half years since Sunil Aggarwal of Portland last had a recorded Hendon Mob cash, but he took down the AJPC High Roller in Inchon, South Korea in the middle of the month, beating 25 others in the KRW5.5M buyin event.

The Other Oregon

If you’re out on the east side of the state and hankering for some poker, the Ontario Poker Room has their monthly schedule posted on their web site. It says they’ve got a $20K GTD $215 buyin tournament on Saturday at 1pm, and a Team Tournament coming up on the 20th, on top of their regular schedule.

My Time Is Coming

After not playing real poker since mid-December, my last foray of the year was to the $10K GTD at Final Table last  Friday night. I didn’t get there until about 7:30. I was down a bit after a bad call, got up to starting stack plus a little, did the addon at break, then ran a bluff on the last two streets with [5x 5x] in the big blind on a board of [jx qx 4x tx 6x] that at least gave the original raiser with [ax tx] and twice my stack at least a little bit of a pause before he called the last bet. After that, I headed over to Room 52 for some $0.50/$1 shootout action and was doing reasonably well until Drew and Alan, both from the old Portland Players Club days, started running the table.

The New Year started off a bit better. I signed up for the Ignition Casino Thousandaire Maker on New Year’s Day, and while I was waiting for it to start, I joined a $15 Jackpot Sit & Go (a 3-person tournament winner-takes-all tournament), and when it spun up the prize pool (which range from $30 to $18,000 for that buyin), it came out at $75. 28 hands later I’d profited $60 for the first score of 2018. That was good, because by the time it ended the Thousandaire Maker was under way, and it didn’t go as well. I went too far out on a draw with a flush draw and bottom pair, and by the river I was down to 15bb. I managed to last another 20 minutes and it looked like I might be about to double up back into contention when I shoved 10bb with [ad 9c] over a raise and got called by [ac 3d] but the trey paired on the flop and that was the end of that.

So I jumped into a 6-Max that started before the Thousandaire Maker, with the starting stack down to 25bb, was down to 10bb in 15 minutes, then got an incredible double up from a player who called my bottom-pair with an ace all-in on the turn with ten-high and a gut shot to a king-high straight. After that I went on a little bit of a rampage, that was brought to a bitter halt when I bubbled the final table with [kd kc] cracked by [qd ah] making a wheel straight on the river. Still, The year was off to a profitable start with 37% ROI.

Only a Day Away

  • There are three more Wednesday 1pm satellites for the Tulalip Poker Pow Wow (including today’s). The satellites are $60, with 1 out of 10 entries winning a seat into the Main Event, with an extra seat added to each tournament. Saturday is the first event of the series, a $120 buyin $10K GTD, with a $20K on Sunday ($240 buyin with $50 bounties). The weekend events start at 11am. Monday is a $7500 GTD Limit Omaha 8, with $10K PLO on Tuesday (both weekday events begin at 1pm and have $175 buyin). The satellite is Wednesday, then Thursday is a 4-Game Mix ($175 buyin) with $7500 GTD: PLO, Pot Limit Hold’em, PLO8, and PL Hol’em Hi-Lo, if you can believe it. The $50K GTD ($330 buyin) has entry days on Friday (1pm) and Saturday (11am) with Day 2 on Sunday. A week from Monday (Martin Luther King Day) is a 2-Game Mix featuring PLO8 and PL 5 Card Holdout (discussed here a couple months ago).
  • The Venetian New Year’s Extravaganza ends Sunday. Thursday through Saturday are entry days for a $150K GTD tournament with just a $250 buyin. There’s a $400 buyin Seniors tournament on Thursday at 11am with a $25K GTD, and one or two other events each day through the end apart from the big tournament.
  • The Gardens Poker Championships has a Limit Big O/Stud 8 tournament Thursday at noon (structure sheet here), with a buyin of $340. Friday at 4pm is a $175 (with $100 addon) tournament with $100K GTD, there are according to the structure sheet, this is a one-day tournament. Sunday is a progressive bounty tournament ($175 buyin with $100 addon) where the bounty chips are worth $50 until players are one table from the money, after which point each bounty chip is worth $100. This system seems a little like it’s rife for cheating, with players holding bounty chips passing them to friends still in the money to reap an extra $50, but I suppose if they pay out the bounties right away it could work.
  • Heartland Poker Tour is at Ameristar East Chicago Thursday, with a $200K GTD opening event (starting days 4—6 January at 2pm, with just a $350 buyin. They’re also running an 8-Max 7-Game Mix event on Sunday (HORSE, PLO, NLHE) with a $200 buyin.
  • Los Angeles Poker Classic 25 opens Tuesday at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles, spanning nearly two months with 67 tournaments. There’s a $1M GTD Kickoff tournament, with a $350 buyin and six days of entry flights.
  • 11 January is the beginning of Thunder Valley’s World Series of Poker Circuit, the closest approach the WSOPC makes to Portland.
  • The Venetian January Weekend Extravaganza runs 16—21 January, with five flights for a $250 buyin $250K GTD tournament at its backbone.

Remember to keep an eye on the #PNWPokerCal Twitter hashtag and the PNW Poker Calendar for upcoming events!